12 Top All-Time Movies According to Famous Directors

Famous directors are not always busy with filming. Sometimes they also like to watch movies and get inspired by the masterpieces their colleagues made.

We at Bright Side decided to compile movies that Woody Allen, Wes Anderson, Tim Burton, Quentin Tarantino, and other filmmakers have watched over and over again.

Quentin Tarantino (the director of Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)

Crawl became Quentin Tarantino’s favorite movie of 2019. Judging by the ratings from the audience, ordinary viewers didn’t like this movie very much. However, the director himself outlined that Crawl “impressed him in every way, in terms of pure filmmaking.”

Florida gets hits by a category 5 hurricane. Haley, the beginner swimmer, can’t get in touch with her father. Feeling worried that something horrible might have happened, she goes to their old family house on Coral Lake. There she finds her father wounded and unconscious. Haley tries to drag her father out but encounters a huge alligator on the way.

IMDb — 6.2

Woody Allen (the director of Love and Death, To Rome with Love, Café Society)

The movie from Swedish director Ingmar Bergman known as Summer with Monika is one of Woody Allen’s favorites.

The main characters, Monika and Harry, are very young and inexperienced. Both of their lives are developing in the least favorable ways, so they decide to escape from their harsh reality. The lovers continue enjoying each other for a while and dream of having a happy future. But once Monika and Harry face real issues, like running out of money and food, other feelings like tiredness and disappointment take the place of love, and it changes the relationship between them forever.

IMDb — 7.5

Christopher Nolan (the director of The Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar)

Christopher Nolan is impressed by a movie called First Man.

The bright biographical movie tells the story of a flight to the Moon. The astronaut, Neil Armstrong, who was the first person to land on the surface of Earth’s natural satellite, is the main figure of the movie. The story is complemented by the details of Neil Armstrong’s family life and the difficult events he had to live through before he conquered space.

IMDb — 7.3

Tim Burton (the director of Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow)

The movie Planet of the Apes impressed Tim Burton so much, that he decided to make his own version of this movie in 2001.

A spaceship sent from Earth crashes on an unknown planet in the distant future. Commander Taylor and his colleagues go on reconnaissance missions and encounter savages. Not having time to figure out what is happening around them, the characters get captured by intelligent monkeys. The primates are dressed up, armed, and hunt for people’s tribes like they do for animals. Taylor, one of the few people who’ve managed to survive, escapes from captivity. But that freedom is going unfold a scary truth for him.

IMDb — 8.0

Wes Anderson (the director of Rushmore, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Grand Budapest Hotel )

The list of Wes Anderson’s favorite movies includes the wonderful film, New York Stories, an anthology film made up of 3 stories: Life Lessons, Life Without Zoë, and Oedipus Wrecks.

Life Lessons by Martin Scorsese revolves around an artist who is about to present his work at a New York exhibition.

Life Without Zoë by Francis Ford Coppola is about a little rich girl (thanks to her parents) and her encounters with criminals and an eastern Princess.

Oedipus Wrecks by Woody Allen is about a guy named Sheldon from a Jewish family and a controlling mother whose command over her son gets even worse after a magician’s trick goes horribly wrong.

IMDB — 6.4

Steven Soderbergh (the director of Contagion, Side Effects, Unsane)

Soderbergh was extremely impressed by the movie, Jaws. He says it was the very film that changed his attitude toward cinema and inspired him to become a director.

The movie takes place on Amity Island, which is full of seaside hotels. In the morning, the police chief Martin Brody and his assistant find the remains of a young woman who was fiercely attacked by a giant white shark just on the shore. Brody decides to agree with the Mayor of the island and close the beaches for a while. But Independence Day is coming, which means there will be a lot of tourists, which is why the Mayor turns down the police chief’s idea. Meanwhile, the shark remains a threat. That’s when Brody and 2 volunteers decide to take things into their own hands.

IMDb — 8.0

James Cameron (the director of Titanic, Avatar, The Terminator)

James Cameron calls Resident Evil his guilty-pleasure.

Someone steals a secret T-virus from an underground laboratory and intentionally breaks one of the deadly flasks right in the building. The virus is dangerous because it instantly turns people into zombies. The main character, Alice, has to recall what she has to do with all this and stop the spread of the virus within a few hours.

IMDb — 6.7

Also, James Cameron likes the movie Gravity. The director says it’s the best space film ever.

Research astronaut Dr. Ryan Stone and veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski get into a catastrophe while repairing a telescope in open space. The shuttle crashes into some space rubbish and only the main characters manage to survive. All they have left to do is to hold each other tightly and move toward the International Space Station in hope of salvation.

• IMDb — 7.7

Peter Jackson (the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong, The Lovely Bones)

Director of cult movies like The Lord of the Rings trilogy likes Dawn of the Dead (directed by George A. Romero, 1978) a lot.

Chaos is everywhere. The number of zombies keeps increasing. 4 people leave the city in a helicopter and stay in one of the suburban trading centers, despite the fact that it’s full of revived dead. The hypermarket’s systems continue to work, there is enough food and water in the trading halls and warehouses to be able to settle down in this place for a while. The characters try to eradicate zombies from the mall, but they don’t even suspect what other difficulties they are going to encounter ahead.

IMDb — 7.9

Steven Spielberg (the director of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Terminal, Bridge of Spies)

One of Steven Spielberg’s favorite movies is Russian Ark by the Russian director, Alexander Sokurov.

The movie tells the story of The Hermitage Museum. A time traveler, who comes from our epoch, suddenly appears there. No one is able to see him, but everyone can hear him. He wonders, “Is everything made to prank me? Or am I supposed to play some role?” Later, while looking around the halls, the traveler meets a stranger, a Frenchman who arrived from the nineteenth century. Together, they start to travel through centuries, meet those who used to live in Hermitage, and discuss the things they see.

IMDb — 7.4

Edgar Wright (the director of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World )

Edgar Wright likes to watch comedies, and he seems to be quite a fan of the movie, Superbad, and has even had the chance to interview the film’s stars, Michael Cera and Jonah Hill.

3 high school nerds who are teased at school decide to change their lives, go to a party, and impress the girls they like by proving that they can play hard.

IMDb — 7.6

Clint Eastwood (the director of Unforgiven, Gran Torino, Million Dollar Baby)

Clint Eastwood gave rave reviews about the movie Tropic Thunder, directed by Ben Stiller in 2008. He says it’s a nice Hollywood comedy and he admires Robert Downey Jr.’s acting.

While shooting the blockbuster movie about the war in Vietnam, the popular actors who play the main roles can’t reach a mutual understanding. Suddenly, an explosion worth $4 million occurs by mistake. All the cameras get shut down at that moment. The producer of the movie scolds the director hard, and the latter decides to go into the jungle of Vietnam together with the actors. The director warns the characters about the future masterpiece and about the hidden cameras recording them all the time. He says it’s their own “private Vietnam” and that they are going “to make the coolest war movie” and then accidentally gets blown up by a mine. That’s just the first test out of many that the heroes are going to encounter on their way.

IMDb — 7.0

Have you seen any of these movies? Did you like them as much as the famous film directors?